Ravenna, a Study eBook

many other officers of the Gascons and Picards, which
nation lost all their glory that day among the French.
But their loss was exceeded by the death of Foix,
with whom perished the very sinews and spirits of
that army. Of the vanquished that escaped out
of the field of battle the greater part fled towards
Cesena, whence they continued their flight to more
distant places; nor did the Viceroy stop till he came
to Ancona where he arrived with a very few horse.
Many were stripped and murdered in their flight; for
the peasants scoured all the roads and the Duke of
Urbino, who from his sending some time before Baldassare
da Castiglione to the King of France, and employing
some trusty persons as his agents with Foix, was supposed
to have entered into a private agreement against his
uncle, not only raised the country against those that
fled, but sent his soldiers to intercept them in the
territories of Pesaro; so that only those who took
their flight through the dominions of the Florentines
were by orders of the magistrates, confirmed by the
republic, suffered to pass unmolested.

“The victorious army was no sooner returned
to camp than the people of Ravenna sent deputies to
treat of surrendering their city; but when they had
agreed or were upon the point of agreement, and the
inhabitants being employed in preparing provisions
to be sent to the camp were negligent in guarding
the walls, the German and Gascon foot entered through
the breach that had been made and plundered the town
in a most barbarous manner, their cruelty being exasperated
not only by their natural hatred to the name of the
Italians, but by a spirit of revenge for the loss
they had sustained in the battle. On the fourth
day after this, Marcantonio Colonna gave up the citadel,
into which he had retired, on condition of safety
to their persons and effects, but obliging himself
on the other hand, together with the rest of the officers,
not to bear arms against the King of France nor the
Pisan Council till the next festival of S. Mary Magdalen;
and not many days after, Bishop Vitello, who commanded
in the castle with a hundred and fifty men, agreed
to surrender it on terms of safety for life and goods.
The cities of Imola, Forli, Cesena, and Rimini, and
all the castles of the Romagna, except those of Forli
and Imola, followed the fortune of the victory and
were received by the legate in the name of the council.”

The site of this great battle is marked by a monument,
a square pilaster of marble, called the Colonna dei
Francesi, adorned with bas-reliefs and inscriptions,
raised in 1557 by the President of the Romagna, Pier
Donato Cesi, on the right bank of the Ronco, some three
miles from the city. We may recall Ariosto’s
verses: